INSTANT MBA: Keeping Employees Motivated Is More Important Than Convincing Them You're Right

"If you don't manage yourself very well, it's hard for you to maximize the performance of a team. And managers can either increase or decrease motivation for their teams. They can either increase or decrease clarity for their teams. They can either build cultures that are highly collaborative and capable of solving problems quickly, or they can create cultures where you have a lot of paralysis and it's very difficult to make decisions."

Yueh says that managing right is more important than being right. You can convince employees to do what you want, yet risk losing their morale. While knowing technicalities can help win an argument, Yueh calls this "losing wars by winning battles." Keeping employees motivated is a long-term victory worth losing battles for. Ultimately, it boils down to managing yourself well.

"I can articulate and debate a viewpoint from many angles, and I found that I could be technically right and force somebody into a viewpoint. But then they would slowly spiral into a place where they're not really working hard because they feel demoralized. So I lost wars by winning battles."

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